A/N: Written for sdficathon on LJ with the prompt: "Sam
and Daniel show how they could totally RULE THE UNIVERSE TOGETHER
BWAHAHAHAAA, if they so chose. Funny or dark, I don't mind." Special thanks to Ayiana for the beta.

Brave New World

"Have you ever
thought that you might do a much better job running the planet?"
Daniel asks one evening after the sun has long since abandoned the
sky.

Sam's lying in the
grass a few meters away and has to crane her neck to judge the
seriousness of the question. A few drinks have been consumed in the
course of the evening, but when she looks up at Daniel, who appears
upside down above her sitting in a chair on the deck, she notices his
hands are as steady as his gaze.

"Sure, all the time,"
she says, letting her neck press back into the cool grass. "Though
I usually think bigger. The whole Universe."

Daniel snickers and she
feels yet another jolt of adrenaline at the familiar sound. He's
been back less than a week and she constantly has to remind herself
that of all the things lost recently, he is not one of them.

If she's completely
truthful, the whole 'not really dead but ascended' riff had never
been of particular comfort to her. Maybe it's a spiritual
shortcoming on her part, but she prefers solid and here to
glowy and vaguely elsewhere. And somehow, this time, she likes to
think that he's come back even more solid than before, because this
time he doesn't look through her.

She curls her fingers
into the lawn and breathes, concentrating on the soft buzz of not
enough sleep and a bit too much beer.

"I'd make all
museums and libraries free to the public," Daniel says.

"What?" Sam asks,
distracted by the effort of keeping her mind safely blank.

"If I ruled the
Universe."

"Ah," she says.
"I'd install Asgard beaming technology and naquadah generators to
stop global warming." She tries not to sound like she's actually
given this too much thought, but she knows without looking that
Daniel is smiling at her rapid answer. "And maybe make flags the
compulsory dress code at the SGC," she adds with a smirk.

Daniel pelts her with
pretzels in retaliation. "Import the nothan plant from PC4-823,"
he shoots back.

"God, kids would
actually eat their vegetables." Sam drools a little remembering the
green bean-like plant that tastes like chocolate pudding. "A
holiday where only motorcycles are allowed on the roads."

"Outlaw MREs."

Sam laughs. "Why do
all of yours have to do with food?"

"Yours are all
technology!" The warmth in his tone erases any imagined
indignation and they fall into silence for a while, Sam munching
thoughtfully on confiscated pretzels.

"It wouldn't be all
that difficult of a thing to do," Daniel replies. It takes her a
moment to realize that he doesn't mean her wardrobe requirements
for villains, and she feels her pulse accelerate in reaction.

"It really wouldn't,"
she agrees, craning her neck to look at Daniel again, but this time
he is staring intently at her, all levity gone. "I have plans,"
she confesses.

"I know."

Of course he does.
It's in her nature to plan, to generate all the possible outcomes
and prepare for them. Even the improbable ones. She knows exactly
how to gain control of the SGC, how to gain the upper hand against
the top levels of command. Every extreme situation has been
considered. They're plans she never speaks of, because even inside
her own head they proved to be too dangerous.

All humans desire
power. It's just that most of them are never in a position to attain
it.

"What sort of gods do
you think we'd make?" she asks.

He doesn't say
anything, but she doesn't really need him to. They're both in
the unique position of having already had that particular fantasy
played out in real time, and she belatedly realizes that this was the
point of the little game from the onset.

It's so like Daniel
to come at something sideways.

"I remember what
happened now, when I was an Ancient," Daniel says, the creak of
wood telling her he's pushing back in the chair, everything just a
little off balance. "I tried to kill Anubis. On Abydos. But Oma
stopped me. I think that was the moment she realized I was never
meant to be an Ancient. My motives were pure…I was right to try.
But I was using my powers to manipulate the universe to suit myself.

"I never understood
how the Ancients could be so hard-lined about non-interference, but
now I wonder if they are so implacable because once you smudge the
border even a little, it's hard to ever stop. It's impossible to
know what I might have become after that."

But Sam knows what she
might become in that situation thanks to Fifth and his obsession with
having a Sam Carter of his very own. They've all seen that 'what
if' played out first hand, Daniel more than anyone. Potential
become cold, hard, metal flesh.

"She killed you,"
she says, more a statement than anything else. It's a horrible
suspicion that's been crawling around in her mind since he first
reappeared, looking a bit haggard but somehow much more human than
ever before.

"Yes," he says, no
qualifiers or hedging, just the short, brutal truth.

Sam closes her eyes
against the stars. Somehow it feels as if she had been the
one to do it, to strike Daniel down, and she wonders how he can even
look at her.

No matter how much
people say the replicator wasn't Sam, no matter how many times they
absolved her of the crimes, she knows it's not completely true.
The replicator was right, that capability is inside her. Sam Carter
with the Universe at her fingertips. She suppresses a shudder and
wraps her arms across her chest.

"You had plans, and
maybe she even used some of them, but I bet you've never even
written them down," Daniel says.

"Does it matter?"

The legs of his chair
set down on the deck with a solid thump. "You of all people should
understand the difference between capability and commitment."

She thinks of all the
impulses she has never acted on, the words and actions suppressed to
training and control. "The replicator thought it made me weak."

Daniel stands up then,
kicking off his shoes and stepping out on the lawn next to Sam. His
face is serious and she can tell he's working up towards something
else, rolling the words around in his mind so they come out just
right.

"I almost gave in to
her," he says after a while. "Not because of the torture, but
because for the merest moment I let myself believe she was you. And
the temptation of sharing all of that with you was almost more than I
could bear."

If it is a
weakness, it's not something unique to either of them. She knows
that the replicator's kidnapping of Daniel was bred from her own
deep-seated desire to share each new discovery with him.

She wonders what ever
happened to the idea of detachment, the one thing SG-1 seems to fail
at more than anything.

"I doubt there has
ever been a team more compromised than SG-1," she observes.

Daniel shrugs. "Maybe
that's why we keep managing to do the impossible."

She likes the idea that
maybe their weakness for each other is the charm that keeps this
delicate blue sphere spinning calmly under the cold stars. It sounds
right, like one of Daniel's ancient stories that passes from tongue
to tongue to stone and parchment stained with generations of fingers,
the one constant to every culture on every planet: flawed people
climbing over insurmountable odds.